The Infinite Sea (The Fifth Wave 2)

“Me too,” I said. “I’m the laid-back type. No worries.”

He wouldn’t go away. He was looking at me and his cheeks were as bright red as his ears. “Is he really your boyfriend?”

“Who? No, Dumbo. He’s just a guy I met one day while he was trying to kill me.”

“Oh. Good.” He seemed relieved. “He’s like Vosch, you know.”

“He’s nothing like Vosch.”

“I mean he’s one of them.” Lowering his voice like he was sharing a dark secret. “Zombie says they’re not like these tiny bugs in our brains, but somehow they downloaded themselves into us like a computer virus or something.”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“That’s weird.”

“Well, I guess they could have downloaded themselves into house cats, but going that route would’ve made our extermination more time-consuming.”

“Only by a month or two,” Dumbo said, and I laughed. Like Sammy’s, mine surprised me. If you wanted to separate humans from their humanity, I thought, killing laughter would be a good place to start. I was never very good at history, but I was pretty sure douchebags like Hitler didn’t laugh very much.

“I still don’t get it,” he went on. “Why one of them would be on our side.”

“I’m not sure he completely understands the answer to that question.”

Dumbo nodded, squared his shoulders, took a deep breath. He was dead on his feet. We all were. I called softly to him before he stepped outside.

“Dumbo.” Ben’s question, unanswered. “Is he going to make it?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. “If I were an alien and I could pick any body I wanted,” he said slowly, “I’d pick a really strong one. And then, just to make sure I’d live through the war, I’d like, I don’t know, make myself immune to every virus and bacteria on Earth. Or at least resistant. You know, like getting your dog vaccinated for rabies.”

I smiled. “You’re pretty smart, you know that, Dumbo?”

He blushed. “That’s a nickname based on my ears.”

He left. I had the eerie feeling of being watched. Because I was being watched: Poundcake stared at me from his post by the window.

“And you

,” I said. “What’s your story? Why don’t you talk?”

He turned away, and his breath fogged the window.

35

“CASSIE! CASSIE, wake up!”

I bolted upright. I’d been curled up next to Evan, my head pressed against his, my hand in his, and how the hell did that happen? Sam was standing beside the bed, pulling on my arm.

“Get up, Sullivan!”

“Don’t call me that, Sams,” I mumbled. The light was bleeding from the room; it was late afternoon. I’d slept through the day. “What . . . ?”

He put one finger to his lips and pointed at the ceiling with another. Listen.

I heard it: the unmistakable sound of a chopper’s rotors—faint but growing louder. I jumped from the bed, grabbed my rifle, and followed Sam into the hall, where Poundcake and Dumbo huddled around Ben, the former quarterback squatting on his haunches, calling the play.

“Might be just a patrol,” he was whispering. “Not even after us. There were two squads out there when the camp blew. Might be a rescue mission.”

“They’ll pick up our signatures,” Dumbo said, panicking. “We’re done, Sarge.”